DARKMANSE

I will show you fear in a handful of dust. — T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the time track, it is 1985 in suburban America and a teenage boy name Wally Haskell has found his mom’s old Hasbro-brand Ouija board tucked away in the sewing room of the family split-level among a stack of board games with names like Trivial Pursuit, Mastermind, Risk, and Clue. He enlists his best friend Eddie to experiment with the board. Wally and Eddie have considerable success, contacting dead relatives, famous historical figures, and even a boy from the nineteenth century who was drowned in a bathtub. Wally and Eddie aren’t really conversing with ghosts, however, because Ouija boards are conduits to the astral plane, not the realm of the dead. The astral plane is teeming with mischievous elementals that feed off of the vital essence of the living, and they will pretend to be anyone you want them to be if it will help them to gain access to you—such as a dead relative, a...